Great post! I am new to online marketing, my business is actually only a month old and I too am using Aweber. I have found it really simple to use and I love the reports section. I am an analyst by trade so this is so up my street! I came across your post as I was interested to find out how Aweber compare to other autoresponders and if I’d made the right decision. Your post has told me I have. I will look forward to reading more of your reviews and tips.
While in these days it’s much less common to get notifications for every email we receive, and instead social media that reigns supreme in that department, that doesn’t mean that email has become any less important. In fact, our email inboxes have become somewhat of a place for solitude for us. Unlike social media – where the content that pops up on your feeds can be sporadic and oftentimes, overwhelming – email is where we receive messages that we’ve carefully chosen to receive.
Basic: Each week I send out an email about my latest podcast episode. Now, I create a rule that says that if they click on the link inside my email (sending them to my show notes page), they get tagged as Interest: Podcast. That means, should I ever want to send an email to those that I know are interested in my podcast, I can just select this tag. Easy.
If Objective-C isn't your thing, their is Titanium from Appcelerator, you use JavaScript to build your app and it gets compiled into Objective-C. Mobile Tuts has a nice tutorial on how to consume the Twitter API, which is also REST based. It should give you a good foundation to get you started. (http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/appcelerator/appcelerator-using-json-to-build-a-twitter-client/)
The Blog Broadcast is Aweber’s term for the automatic emails that get sent out every time you publish a blog post. They are separate from the other automatic follow ups that you send out. The great thing about Aweber is that you can choose to send a hundred follow ups or none, automatic blog broadcasts or manual blog broadcasts, etc. It is all up to you. For example, here on Blog Tyrant I send out all my updates automatically to my subscribers as well as the occasional email newsletter with a few tips and specials.
After you’ve set up your email automation workflow, you might want to start targeting your audience in more specific ways. For example, you may want to send those who have clicked through to read your “social media automation for dummies” blog post a follow-up email with more information on social media automation and how your product can offer a solution.
Very interesting indeed. I am currently using MailChimp and reading through this article, I am wondering when it was written as features have changed in MC, the tracking has more than is mentioned here, there is now a visual drag and drop editor to create custom campaigns, etc. I am not familiar with aweber but maybe some things have also changed on their side. Maybe we’d need an updated version of this article, along with a DATE of when the comparison was made.
Basic: Each week I send out an email about my latest podcast episode. Now, I create a rule that says that if they click on the link inside my email (sending them to my show notes page), they get tagged as Interest: Podcast. That means, should I ever want to send an email to those that I know are interested in my podcast, I can just select this tag. Easy.

When you write great content for your industry you can share it on other related blogs that have high traffic and authority. Guest posting and blogging is a great way to build your personal brand. It makes an awesome marketing channel for your blog. You want to target posts on sites that are relevant for your niche, have an active audience and will include backlinks to your blog and your mini bio in your post.

MailChimp does not allow content that references the terms “make money at home”, ‘get rich quick’, or other similar terms. These keywords overlap keywords used by ISPs and SpamCop organizations to block content associated with spammers from those industries. This generates too much risk for us to encounter automated spam filter blocks for all of our customers.
I think this is just giving you a very cautious report. Infusionsoft is quite protective of their lists and how they send but it looks like you had 114,528 on your list and sent to 101,929 with 0 Skipped and 0 Errors. So the variance is due to several things such as the contacts didn’t have email addresses or there are some duplicates and/or 13,000 had opted out. You only had 12 Complaints, which is quite low, but maybe the bulk of them came during one segment that was sent, which created the warning. I have one of the senior support guys looking into this, but I think you are fine.”

The Smart Passive Income Blog started in October 2008 simply as a place for me to report and talk about everything that was happening with my business at GreenExamAcademy.com. Starting an online business changed my life and saved my butt after getting laid off, and it was the least I could do to pay it forward and hopefully help others that had met struggles during the recession, too.

We hope that you’ve found this email marketing guide useful. As you can see, with a couple of smart moves, you can create a cycle in which your mailing list is continuously going to grow. As the market is constantly changing, remember to use one of the abovementioned tools, as they will make it much easier for you to test, experiment with and optimize your email strategy for the best performance.
If you look around Blog Tyrant you will see that I have a pop up advert displayed once to new visitors, a sidebar form, a form under the first post and a form at the end of each single post. I have given each one a different name in my Aweber dashboard (popup, form, single post, front page) and I can track which one is working best for me. Thrilling!
There were a lot of other options on the table for higher-level email marketing too, such as Ontarport (formerly known as Office Autopilot), but I remembered an Infusionsoft “sister” conference where I gave the keynote presentation in 2014 called PartnerCON and I met a lot of the staff over at Infusionsoft, which left me with a great impression of the company, so I decided to roll with it.
When you write great content for your industry you can share it on other related blogs that have high traffic and authority. Guest posting and blogging is a great way to build your personal brand. It makes an awesome marketing channel for your blog. You want to target posts on sites that are relevant for your niche, have an active audience and will include backlinks to your blog and your mini bio in your post.

You can turn off confirmed opt-ins in AWeber, but it’s not recommended, which your story verifies. One of the reasons that AWeber has a high deliverability rate is the lack of spam going out via the service. So when importing a list it does suck to have to send out a bunch of emails, but it keep their service up and going, and our emails being delivered.

If you look around Blog Tyrant you will see that I have a pop up advert displayed once to new visitors, a sidebar form, a form under the first post and a form at the end of each single post. I have given each one a different name in my Aweber dashboard (popup, form, single post, front page) and I can track which one is working best for me. Thrilling!
FYI, this will show up at the of every email you send out to your subscribers. This is important because when you input your address in the Account Information section, you may have used the address associated with your credit card. This is usually a home address. So I’d advise renting a PO Box so you can use that address here. It keeps your home address private.

Open rate shows a percentage of total recipients that viewed your email. You can track it in HTML emails that include a transparent image (a tracking pixel). When it’s loaded, an email is tracked as open. This metric isn’t 100% accurate. As mentioned earlier, some email providers block images, and a user needs to enable them to see the visual elements.

Variations of “Hello {!firstname_fix}” have become the norm in email marketing, not the outlier. Because of that, it’s losing its effectiveness. You can still use name personalization, but you also want to think about going a step further. At AWeber, we recommend segmenting your audience and sending each segment tailored messages with unique subject lines.
I think this is just giving you a very cautious report. Infusionsoft is quite protective of their lists and how they send but it looks like you had 114,528 on your list and sent to 101,929 with 0 Skipped and 0 Errors. So the variance is due to several things such as the contacts didn’t have email addresses or there are some duplicates and/or 13,000 had opted out. You only had 12 Complaints, which is quite low, but maybe the bulk of them came during one segment that was sent, which created the warning. I have one of the senior support guys looking into this, but I think you are fine.”
So with these factors in mind, I had been staying put with Aweber because they met a number of these criteria. But I knew that I really wanted to up level my email marketing and put more customized sequences and automation into place so that the user experience could be much better, and I would have a clearer picture of my audience and what they want from me.
Opt-in rates have been on the decline for the last decade or so, and I’ve tried a lot of different solutions that have promised to turn that trend around. Of all the things I’ve tried including web based apps and various plugins, only Post Gopher actually delivered. I installed it on my bizweb2000.com blog and… “Post Gopher Has Performed Better Than All The Other List Building Solutions I Use Combined!”
I’ve worked with Promote Labs now for over 11 years. Year after year Jeremy and Simon have landed at the top of my leaderboards for Internet Marketing products with a strong emphasis on Video Marketing. These are VERY competitive leaderboards with sales hitting both six and seven figures. The additional effort that they put into… “Solid Killer Promotions Year After Year”

This is not the first time - nor will it be the last time that they have amazed us with the quality and content of product. Not only are their products detailed and easy to follow, but they go over the top in delivering how-to guides with step-by-step instructions that make my products stand out from the crowd. This will help solve your problem and improve yourself as a marketer. - Adam Davies

If Objective-C isn't your thing, their is Titanium from Appcelerator, you use JavaScript to build your app and it gets compiled into Objective-C. Mobile Tuts has a nice tutorial on how to consume the Twitter API, which is also REST based. It should give you a good foundation to get you started. (http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/appcelerator/appcelerator-using-json-to-build-a-twitter-client/)

Hi BlogTyrant. My question is related to an older post whose comments option was closed (just read that it is one of the visitor-bringing tricks:)). So, a while ago you said that got 11,908 visitors in just 3 weeks. Did you get that performance with blogtyrant from scratch? (I mean without using your other blogs or social media connections, etc?). It is hard for me to understand that a beginner will get such a huge traffic in about 20 days, when actually that is maybe the time necessary to make the blog a little known, probably just indexed by google and slightly ranked.

Aweber is the perfect email solution for your business and organization. With Aweber you can build and control all of your emails and email lists. It will organize your contacts into specific email groups, so you can be sure that you send the email to the right email list. Aweber allows people to subscribe or unsubscribe to your email list easily. It is the perfect tool for your email marketing needs.
I wasn’t sharing my affiliate link for ConvertKit (but I am now – I earn a commission if you buy with this link) as this move was happening because I wanted to take a couple of months to really test it out. After using it for more than three months now, however, I’m extremely happy with the results and am confident in my recommendation. Please note that I do receive a commission from the affiliate links to ConvertKit that are on this page. [Full Disclosure: I’m a compensated advisor and an affiliate for ConvertKit.]

With its user-friendly templates, anyone who's dipping their toes into email marketing waters would love Vertical Response. Each campaign that you published with this software may be hosted for free online, allowing you to share links of previous campaigns even to non-subscribers. If you want to design your own emails, you can quickly make your own through the in-app image editor with filters and special text options.

Aweber is another favorite tool that is aimed at small and mid-sized businesses. It also packs an enormous amount of features, making it an outstanding email management software tool. Automation, tracking and template building are all easy to perform with this tool, earning it a place on this shortlist. It can also be easily integrated into all types of websites.
This is not the first time - nor will it be the last time that they have amazed us with the quality and content of product. Not only are their products detailed and easy to follow, but they go over the top in delivering how-to guides with step-by-step instructions that make my products stand out from the crowd. This will help solve your problem and improve yourself as a marketer. - Adam Davies
With Aweber however, this is not that easy to do. With Aweber, each and every one of your subscribers is tagged with a message number which indicates which followup emails they have received already. To prevent a subscriber from receiving a specific followup email, you must set the subscriber’s message number to be higher than the email sequence number.

Hey Chris, great blog about Aweber. I hear Jay talk about Aweber on the Friday webinars within WA, and was always intrigued. Being a relative newbie to all this. I have been apprehensive to get too involved right now, I am still just trying to get down the basics of affiliate marketing, so doing the email thing is a bit scary for me, but after reading your review, I will check out Aweber. It can’t hurt to get some info on it, and to test drive it for free for a month. Thanks for the informative and honest article!

I totally agree about content. I have been a long advocate of this because if there is nothing on the website, then there is no reason to return. E-mail campaigns are only good to have people return to the website. Having people, come once is a waste and will probably get people to unsubscribe to your e-mails. And once they unsubscribe it is nearly impossible to get them to subscribe again to be on your list.
Thanks Aaron, Your products are always top notch! The helpful videos really supply many ideas on product creation and then ways to promote them. Pricing products has always been a problem, but not anymore, from learning how to discern a price to one-time-offers to making more profits, the videos are really a teaching tool! Everyone need these training! - JB Nova

We make every effort to ensure that we accurately represent these products and services and their potential for income. Earning and Income statements made by our company and its customers are estimates of what we think you can possibly earn. There is no guarantee that you will make these levels of income and you accept the risk that the earnings and income statements differ by individual. As with any business, your results may vary and will be based on your individual capacity, business experience, expertise, and level of desire. There are no guarantees concerning the level of success you may experience. The testimonials and examples used are exceptional results, which do not apply to the average purchaser and are not intended to represent or guarantee that anyone will achieve the same or similar results. Each individual’s success depends on his or her background, dedication, desire and motivation. There is no assurance that examples of past earnings can be duplicated in the future. We cannot guarantee your future results and/or success. There are some unknown risks in business and on the internet that we cannot foresee which can reduce results. We are not responsible for your actions. The use of our information, products, and services should be based on your own due diligence and you agree that our company is not liable for any success or failure of your business that is directly or indirectly related to the purchase and use of our information, products and services.

Use personalization. Personalizing the content of your emails (depending on your segment from Chapter 3) will make it so much more relevant and valuable to them. Personalization goes beyond sticking your subscriber’s first name into the email. You need to tailor the actual content of the email to address their needs. For instance, an online retailer will find it much more valuable to read an email with the subject line, “How to build backlinks to your eCommerce store” than just a generic subject line, “How to build backlinks.”
Thanks again for another fine quality product. I have been a member of quite a few of your email lists and have purchased a lot of your products also. One thing I can say is they all are very thorough, informative and you over deliver. I have dealt with a lot of online marketers but there are very few like you who deliver such value and so quick to respond to e-mails. You are someone I know I can trust and that is very important in this business. Thanks again and hope to be able to meet you someday. - Rick Sorrels

Just so you know, I am quite a newbie to this brave new world of autoresponders. Before I started this site (rather, I migrated from a previous platform to this self-hosted WordPress platform), I had not even heard of autoresponders. But since the beginning of this site, I have adopted a new attitude: from a lackadaisical blogger to one more focussed on the possibility of building a long-term business.

AWeber has the most user friendly interface and you can easily create stunning newsletter using AWeber built-in sign up forms. Nevertheless to say, AWeber control panel is so much easier to understand even for the beginners who don’t have much technical knowledge. AWeber currently has over 700+ stunning email templates and 6,000+ free stock images to create spectacular newsletters for your subscribers.
So you should review the product to see if it provides value for your subscribers. Does it work? Is it helpful? How is the support from the product creator? You are co-signing on all of this when you send that email to your list. As a newbie you still need to nurture and protect your list by emailing them frequently with more informative content. Just make sure this product meets your standards.
The key is when visitors hit your blog it needs to look like something. This will lure visitors to want to sign up for your mailing list in exchange for something of value that you offer. This could be a special report, an ebook or some other free gift. Marketers call these “lead magnets” because you’re attracting leads that you can eventually convert as you sell them products and services.

AWeber finds a healthy balance between ease of use and robust functionality. There are some nice features — particularly in the autoresponder realm — but navigation is intuitive enough that I was able to perform basic tasks without looking up tutorials. When I did find myself at a loss and turned to the online help resources, I was quite impressed with the range and scope of guidance available.